Notes and Editorial Reviews

ECM’s newly released compilation of works by Heinrich Biber completes and complements John Holloway’s recording two years ago of the Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Sonatas from Biber’s 1681 set along with several other, unpublished, sonatas on CD 289 472 084-2, 26:3. Since at that time ECM announced that Holloway had already recorded all eight of the sonatas, it’s fair to assume that he’s playing the Michiel de Hoog copy of a 1649 Nicola Amati that he used in the normally tuned sonatas in that issue.

While the collection also includes a sonata from Biber’s Mystery set (the “Crucifixion”) in an adaptation by Andreas Anton Schmelzer (Andrew Manze incorporated the same piece into a Schmelzer collection, Harmonia Mundi HMURead more 907143, 20:2) that adds an extra movement and transposes the original, which now depicts “Victori der Christen” as well as a sonata by Georg Muffat, the bulk of the program comprises the remaining four sonatas from 1681. These combine glittering virtuosity with powerful expressive catharses; in fact, on their evidence alone, it seems unjust to place Biber far below Paganini (at the Genoese’s best, that is) in fusing manner and matter...Like Andrew Manze in his recent version of the Mystery Sonatas (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907 321.22), Holloway’s sound represents a synthesis of the old and the new. And he plays his sonatas even straighter than Manze did those, remaining close to the printed version, even while adding judicious ornamentation, even, here and there, of the more florid kind. In the company of these oracular utterances, the reworked “Crucifixion” seems especially jubilant, to say nothing of Muffat’s later work.

Biber aficionados simply can’t afford to miss the entire reading of the 1681 sonatas; those who haven’t already acquired the first volume must now obtain both. Recommended with special enthusiasm.